Rarely Seen Maps From San Francisco’s Quirkiest Hidden Library

Have you ever gone to a place you've always wanted to visit and found out it was even more awesome than you thought it would be? That's how I felt last week when we visited the Prelinger Library, an eclectic collection run by Megan and Rick Prelinger (the folks in the photo below). I spent the rest of the day kicking myself for not getting there earlier, and a fair bit of the next day planning my return.

The library shares a building with a carpet store and a dance studio in a slightly ragged patch of San Francisco's SoMa neighborhood. There's no sign, but if you know what you're looking for, you step inside the lobby and press a button on the intercom to be admitted. It's like a speakeasy of maps.

OK, so there's lots more than just maps, but maps are what we were there to see. On the library's website, the Prelingers describe it as "a collection of 19th and 20th century historical ephemera, periodicals, maps, and books, most published in the United States." They specialize in collecting stuff not commonly found in other libraries.

Inside, the space is small, mostly taken up by shelves. There's a desk at the front for visitors to read and work. The smell makes me nostalgic for the tiny public library my mom used to take me to when I was a kid.

The library opened in 2004 and now houses something like 75,000 items. "The rule is, it takes one of us to acquire something and two of us to get rid of it," Rick said.

"Everything that's here is here because we're interested in it," Megan added. "We started the collection because we're both independent makers drawing on neglected historical material."

The maps in this gallery are just a tiny sample of the Prelingers' collection, and they're certainly not the last ones you'll see featured here at Map Lab. One thing that strikes me about this group of maps is how they evoke the times and places they came from, from the optimistic spirit of the 1939 New York World's Fair and Golden Gate International Exposition to the fear and paranoia of the Cold War.

Prepare to be transported.

Photos: Ariel Zambelich/WIRED

San Francisco, 1980

During the Cold War, both the U.S. and Soviet Union actively mapped the world, covering allies and foes alike. Rick says this map appears to be adapted from U.S. government topographic maps, such as those made by the USGS. But it was out of date even in 1980. Bay Area residents will note that Interstate 280 has some patchy spots about halfway up the peninsula, and there's no sign of BART, which began operation in 1972. Then again, it's hard enough to get your bike on BART, let alone launch an invasion.

Cuba, 1962

Rick says this map of Cuba, produced by the American-owned oil company Esso, was probably the last edition before the Cuban government nationalized Esso's oil facilities because they refused to refine state-owned oil imported from the Soviet Union. That happened in 1960. "The Cuba map is dated 1956 -- the date of revision of the map base -- but it has a printing date of 1962," Prelinger said. "It is tempting to imagine it was made for the Bay of Pigs invasion force, but I have no information this is so."

United States, 1959

This Farsi map of the U.S. was made by the General Drafting Company under contract from the U.S. Information Agency, whose mission was to generate positive propaganda to be distributed abroad in the post-World War II era. Similar versions were produced in Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and perhaps other languages. The maps show off the rich bounty of American farms and factories. Also, the wine-guzzling Basque shepherds of eastern Oregon.

United States, 1939

Say it's 1940 and you're out for a Sunday drive. You want to fire up that newfangled radio thingamabob and find some Benny Goodman. But where, oh where to turn the dial? You wouldn't be so lost if you had one of these handy RCA Radio Tour maps, distributed by RCA radio dealers and perhaps in magazine ads. The map urges you to explore the 650 AM stations on the air at the time. "Don't be satisfied with nearby stations -- reach out for your radio enjoyment," it says. "Be a radio tourist."

New York, 1939

More than 44 million people attended the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940. The maps above and below were printed in the official guidebook. The fair focused on the world of tomorrow, with exhibits on such futuristic technologies as color photography, nylon, air conditioning, and Smell-O-Vision, a system of pipes connected to movie theater seats to deliver puffs of odor carefully timed to coincide with events on the screen. Oh, brave new world!

San Francisco, 1938

Meanwhile, out on the left coast, San Francisco held its own fair in 1939 and 1940 to celebrate the recent completion of its two bridges -- the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, completed in November 1936, and the Golden Gate Bridge, completed in April 1937. The Golden Gate International Exposition also celebrated the city's position as a gateway to the Pacific with its theme, "Pageant of the Pacific."

The map above comes from the Almanac for Thirty-Niners, a book compiled by the Workers of the Federal Writers'
Project of the Works Progress Administration. (Among many other fascinating facts, the book includes this entry for January 27: "The first toothbrushes seen in California were
unloaded, along with axes, shoes, fish-lines, and grindstones, from an American vessel which tied up at the Embarcadero of San Jose in 1840.")

The expo took place on Treasure Island, which frankly hasn't been much fun ever since. With World War II looming, the island was soon converted into a Navy base. The base closed in 1997, but development has been stymied by toxic contamination, a high risk of liquefaction during an earthquake, and political wrangling.

San Francisco, 1951

This evacuation map comes from a Civil Defense booklet entitled "It's Your Life...The San Francisco Plan." Indeed, along with evacuation routes out of the city, the pamphlet included a guide to the radiation shielding provided by various materials and duck-and-cover strategies. Rick believes the booklet was distributed to all households in the city.

Oakland, 1942

This wartime map made by the Army Map Service hides potentially sensitive information, blanking out the airbase at Alameda and Navy base on Treasure Island.

Western U.S., 1938

This map, compiled by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, shows the seasonal migration routes of sheep in the western states.

California, 1947

The Prelinger library has loads of road maps (see below). The Richfield Highway Relief map above shows elevation changes and points of interest along common routes. The elevation changes were probably an important consideration in the early days of automobiles, Rick says. Similar maps date back at least to the 1920s. "They were included in a special regional booklet targeted at long-distance travelers."

Erie Area, 1944

This map appeared in the January, 1944 issue of Fortune magazine. Rick says it was part of an ad for the Erie Railroad targeted at businessmen and industrialists in need of railroad freight service.